Samsara
by neon flights
Summary: [Madoka Magica-esque AU] Unspectacular stock boy Yosuke Hanamura sorely lacks in friends, entertainment and talent. The appearance of Yu Narukami, irritatingly mysterious new transfer student, may just be enough to solve all three problems or cause him a hundred more.


My intention from the start was 'to write the story of Persona 4 with the environment, general format and looming despair of Puella Magi Madoka Magica' – or, if you want, 'Puella Magi Yosuke Magica without any actual magical girls'. A particular fanart inspired it, with Yosuke acting as Madoka and Yu as Homura. That could describe one out of at least ten others of this nature I've seen since then, ranging from that innocent first one to some heart-wrenching stuff I see now while glancing at the persona magica tag on tumblr as I type this before uploading this darn thing. So many ideas run around with this concept and literally take Madoka and put each of the Persona 4 characters into the places of the cast, soul gems and transformations and all. But my 'headcanons' differed there, and really tried to bring Persona to Madoka's level rather than the other way around, and that's why I wanted to write what you're going to start reading now. This series is already rife with themes on the psyche; I don't see why it shouldn't go to waste!

This has taken the most brainstorming out of any fic I've ever considered, especially when you consider Madoka's four main characters against P4's eight. Deciding who played what role and when has been quite the challenge, but a good one! Though I'm not entirely sure how much this spoils Madoka itself – if anything, it's general concepts and overtones that would be the issue. If you consider those to be spoilers (I personally would) and are concerned about that, I maybe wouldn't possibly read this fic. If you haven't seen the series yet I'd still recommend watching it anyway! I think it's excellent.

I worry that this chapter will be the longest and also the boring-est. Things pick up, I promise! I'm sure plenty of you know what you're in for anyway. I also spent so much time on this chapter and going over it enough times to hate it that I was just determined to upload it at this point, so I apologise in advance for any fabulous errors I missed in my determination to get this out there after... it's been close to a year, that's for sure.

Chapters might start off with a small thing to set the theme. These vary from direct excerpts or quotes from things that aren't my own (which I will try to credit in an unobtrusive place at some point - I don't plan to fill this fic with huge author's notes like this one, it does terrible things to the flow at times), similar things with my own take on them, and to outright original concepts from myself. They helped the writing process along a bit and I thought they'd make a nice touch.

* * *

_**I – Caligo in somnio**_

_The mind is incapable of creating human faces on its own.  
Every single one you see in your dreams has been seen by you before, no matter how brief or obscure the moment. Even in passing, the mind holds onto those faces, and it never lets them go._

It's cold, but humid. It's windy, yet breezeless all at once.

The sky, dyed a red that puts blood to shame, presses down on the yellowed earth with an oppressiveness that makes the boy shiver.

He shouldn't be doing this - he _really_ shouldn't. If his own acknowledgement isn't enough to attest to that, the shape his heart is beating into his chest is. The adrenaline floods through him as he runs in this cruel and unusual land, the littered rubble from the nearby remnants of buildings being kicked around his feet. The roads are quite literally winding and rolling, distorting into shapes not possible naturally and weird enough to be taken as something they actually aren't.

It's a world of optical illusions. Maybe it was all an illusion. Maybe not. He hoped it was, and that itself could be one.

When he slows to a stop, he stands before a large thing he could only describe as a portal. It has a hypnotic structure to it, rings of dangerous red and black shrinking towards the centre as if sucking them in and beckoning him forward. It's a disconcerting combination – of course this whole _place_ is – and he steps back from it little. The movement dislodges a roll of yellow tape from a dip in the ground and it bounces once before it lands and begins to roll towards the portal, leaving a short trail before it becomes swallowed.

The tape is a consistent **CAUTION - DO NOT CROSS**.

His breathing is stilted and uneven while his lungs still burn from the exertion. There's a buzzing in his ears accompanying the low drone that now adds to the detached sense of reality he can't help but feel as he stares at the rings. Every inhibition he has is _screaming_ at him, but the boy swallows, his face set. A hand reaches up to shift the brown hair plastered to his forehead, and then back to wipe the sweat from his neck. He momentarily grabs the headphones that rest around it like it's a gesture of comfort. He suddenly feels a renewed sense of purpose for being here – _which was what, exactly?_ – and takes a deep breath before he walks forward, taking that one last step through the horizontal rabbit hole.

It feels like walking through a film of water. In fact, it feels _exactly_ like – like... what? The thought's there, but it peters out before it fully connects.

What now occurs induces many emotions.

This _place_ he's been brought into - it's everything he knows, it's everything he doesn't _quite_ love at that moment in time, and yet it isn't. Simply there, in all its ruin. The town of Inaba is a ravaged ghost of what he had become accustomed to, made even more so by the fog that chokes it. The roads that were often desolate in the small populated town are barely visible between the ruptured concrete and fallen bricks. Even the shopping district that resents him, and that he in turn also resents, is near unrecognisable if not for the very large remnant of that couldn't belong to anything other than the Moel refill station.

The drone increases to the point where he can feel it in his chest, like a heavy bass he would've felt better without. There's a good, throbbing beat that makes him bounce his head contentedly and then there's_ this_. Fog seems to conceal the far distance and it does nothing but force him to advance. He could stay there if he really wanted, but he's aware that it's too chilling a sight to be standing around in this place as nonchalant as he is currently.

There is a sudden sense of presence in the air along with the mist, as if something is looming somewhere up ahead. Going by the sounds, it's something huge; something that shouldn't be real. Yosuke steps forward and then, at last, a sight of some sort finally reveals itself.

Far from where he is, on top of a building that seems pristine compared to the rest, a boy around his age stands. He doesn't, _shouldn't_ know him, or at least he doesn't think so. He _might _be wearing the Yasogami uniform, but it's hard to tell through this fog. It breaks once and allows Yosuke to see that his grey hair is cut short, a sword sheathed at his hip. His stance is one you could only describe as something made for battle. But there's nothing to fight against as far as he can see. What is the boy standing there for? Yosuke tries to look around to find an answer, and he feels like he's found it, but when he does it makes him take a step back and his heartbeat quickens again.

Whatever it is, it's huge. Huge enough to take over such a large portion of the sky that it makes it seem that the moon has come down, or something along those lines. Yosuke can't even make out any of its detail aside from its roundness, sheer size and, going by the boy standing over there, the imminent threat it poses. The fog really is that thick. The droning now causes him to feel a little dizzy, but he tries to shake this off. He can only guess it's the thing in the sky causing it, as well as the cause of the destruction of everything else around him. Yosuke at least hopes it is, because if not, it means there's another potentially massive thing around that he can't see yet. He shudders at the idea and looks back down again.

The boy raises his hand and with a yell of something, he clenches it shut. A fierce blue light envelops him, and at this point, Yosuke _swears _that something comes out of him. Again he fails to make anything out save for its size, which seems to be about three times that of the boy's.

He desperately tries to keep track of this boy and the figures that surround him, but again the fog obscures it all. All he can do is track his silhouette, which makes it all the worse when Yosuke sees a burst of light followed by the airborne figure being smacked away. The grounded one suddenly launches into the air and flies a horrifying distance (but not as far as the larger did, who Yosuke can't even see anymore), scattering the smaller things that look gooey in texture and slams to the ground to collide straight into a broken pillar. Yosuke feels his heart skip a beat and he rushes forward, forgetting the massive distance between the two, but the boy seems to be able to move again despite what just occurred and stands up. Something about him feels _wrong_, especially after enduring something that should have incapacitated him with such ease. Instead of collapsing, he summons yet another figure – one with a different shape this time that's less humanoid, more like an animal or something – and it zooms towards the floating entity with a green glow around it, like that landing hadn't even happened.

He feels words coming out of himself that aren't entirely voluntary, but it makes it clearer than ever how his throat feels dry as the semi-desert he stands on and has been as such for a while now.

"Wh... what does he think he's _doing_?"

Drier still when he hears something _respond_.

"Fighting a one-sided battle, by the looks of it."

Yosuke whips away from the scene to face his side, where the sight of the stranger that just spoke greets him. He's standing in what seems to be a work uniform. It's difficult to make out his appearance otherwise, as Yosuke finds he can't look directly at him for reasons he doesn't know. Still, he vaguely watches him watch the battle with no trace of anything in his gaze. With a little more inspection, it's simply quiet observation and never anything more than that. Detachment. Passiveness. The brunet turns back as well – what else _can_ he do? - and they look on together.

The grey-haired boy has moved in that short space of time and he's currently smacking away at some malformed shapes at his feet with his blade, occasionally looking upwards and making some sort of gesture that may be causing the larger figure to attack with something different going by the various colours of light that reach his eyes. Yosuke can't tell if he's being overpowered or not and this somehow worries him more than knowing for certain.

"Why is... can't something done about this?" he asks, unable to hold back the quiver in his voice when the grey-haired boy barely dodges another beam of light sent his way from the sphere in the sky. "This... this is _terrible!_ H-He's fighting those things all on his own and he could be _losing_ for all we know, and there's no one around who can help—"

Red eyes glint in the shade. "There's not much that can be done on _his_ part, no."

He watches for a while longer – watches the boy flicker and miraculously dodge a building thrown at him and asks himself what is happening all over again - and only then notices the emphasis in the stranger's sentence.

"But... what about me? _I'm _here, right?"

At the sides, their smile curls. "Indeed you are."

The boy manages to sit up once more, having been knocked down again at some point, but it seems a greater effort. Yosuke watches him intently as the fog lightens a little. He can see enough to tell that the boy's looking around him, and when he seems to face them, his eyes light up in horrified recognition when he sees Yosuke. He waves his arm furiously at him in a sort of swatting motion, like he's trying to move the fog away. What is this meant to mean? Yosuke's mind is still churning through too many other ideas to consider further. He clenches the front of his jacket with both hands as words form on his mouth.

"So... _I_ could help him? I _can_ help... can't I?"

"Well, as you are now, you're useless."

_Oh, of course,_ Yosuke thinks, and clenches tighter. It's exactly the answer he expects. He may as well have turned around at the portal and gone on with his life. What does he ever plan on doing here, anyway?

_**God, Hanamura, were you **_**always**_** this useless?**_

_**-and you can't even do **_**that**_** right. What'd you even come in for?**_

_**I asked you to do **_**one thing **_**and you just—**_

"However," Yosuke snaps to attention as their voice breaks through all of that, whatever 'that' _is_, "that doesn't mean we can't change that. Do you _want_ to help this boy?"

Another beam shoots out and with a horrific _crack_ that bounces off what remains around them, the area where the boy stands starts to crumble. He tries to scramble to his feet, but his speed only encourages the dissolving of his perch, and only one leg stands supported. Wasn't for long, though.

"I can save him?" breathes the brunet. "Can I _really_ _do_ something about this?"

He watches him fall again - it's like a train wreck, really; can't tear those eyes away because _nothing ever happens_ – with the boy's arm stretched out towards him, mouth open in a plea that he cannot hear.

"Of course."

Yosuke turns back to look at the stranger once more – looks up at them to see their hand held out, palm upwards, and carefully neutral in their expression.

"Take my hand, and I will help you rise."

There are a lot of things about this that ring bells in his head. The gameshow kind and the warning kind mingle together in a cacophony of noise, but other than that Yosuke's mind feels pleasantly empty. So many things go wrong, and things finally look like they'll go up for once, so why not?

Down and down the boy goes into an abyss that Yosuke can't see the bottom of, and he decides to bridge that gap and reach out for himself.

Dazedly he watches his hand rise into the air, and then blinks. All he sees is a matt colour, his hand grasping at nothing. He blinks some more and things become less blur in and out of focus. His hand falls down and lands across his chest with a _plop_, and he wonders why it feels like he's pressed up against such a cushy wall on his tip-toes in the first place.

Then his bearings somewhat rectify themselves with the update that he isn't standing anymore and is seeing the world horizontally. Sunlight courses through slightly parted curtains and peals his room with its glow. The smell of eggs in the pan assails his senses, a very distant humming to accompany it, and his senses readjust.

It is morning once more and Yosuke was awake.

Once again, he blinked dazedly at his ceiling and wondered for a moment what it was doing there all of a sudden, like it shouldn't have been there at all and the typically overcast Inaba skies were meant to be his morning greeting.

Suddenly his alarm started to beep out and he smacked at it with the energy of a slug. With how he felt at the time, he could have been more astonished that he woke up before it for once. It always seemed easier to get up at the start of the semester, and it wouldn't be much longer before his sleep routines reverted to their beautifully horrendous state like they were before the holidays.

Thinking about this reminded him that it was the first day of school that day. Sudden dread aside, Yosuke Hanamura was _finally_ a second-year. Now that he was someone's senpai – not even that, _multiple_ someones – that would mean there'd be a chance of some of them becoming his friends or giving him a bit of respect for once, right?

He remembered where he lived and who he was and gave an empty groan as he faceplanted onto his bedroom floor. It could have been worse; he landed an inch from a box of plectrums that could have been something disastrous.

* * *

After several minutes of staring at shower tiles and feeling vaguely philosophical, Yosuke stumbled into the kitchen no more awake than he was before. Even the smell of food failed to rouse him, but it didn't stop him from sitting down in front of a modestly filled plate and his stomach gurgling in pleasantness.

"Morning honey," he vaguely remembered hearing as he grabbed his chopsticks. He muffled something incoherent in reply.

His mother, the quieter of his parents, went back to cooking more eggs while humming softly. Yosuke didn't recognise the tune this time, but at least the phase of humming the Junes theme song had long died off. Those few weeks after they had moved into town were slightly more painful that way. Whether it was a sickening of the song or what the song represented, it would be a mystery to everyone.

His father sat across him at the table with a plate speckled with crumbs in front of him, frowning into the paper he was engrossed in. With sense beginning to fill his head, Yosuke honestly wondered why anyone in this family still read it, or anyone in town, for that matter. There was the occasional time when it raved about the continual success of the famous Amagi Inn; otherwise it was full of the usual deadbeat town drivel, like _Woman Charged With Theft of Steak Croquette_ or _Man Sees Cuckoo_. Times like those made it mildly entertaining at best, but Yosuke would have had to try really hard to see it. It never stopped Dad from glossing over it though, possibly trying to get into the heads of his extended customers or some dumb-ass thing like that.

As someone who was often coined the regular stock boy, Yosuke wouldn't have known what managing Junes was like, personally. As unwelcome as Junes was to... well, just about everyone, it certainly didn't stop them from shopping there. Or delivering their complaints to Yosuke himself, who only ever just stood there for the kind, kind customer service they expect from him when they pull him from the stock rooms and have him on the sales floor that he attempts but never quite achieves, quite like how he gets paid much less for it than he would want. As the days went on, it got slightly worse, but it turned out to be another speck on Junes' growing list of necessary evils. The pains of being the manager's son would only leave when his parents did, or perhaps Yosuke himself. As he thought about all of his, he sighed and eventually began to gnaw on the fried eggs his mother had put on his plate about halfway through his musing.

Eating his breakfast was as mindless an affair as it always was, his parents chatting idly about this and that over work-related things he'd learned to tune out by that stage. Ideally Yosuke would want to finish and leave before they do, before they get a chance to ask (in reality, kindly force) him to cover yet another shift that comes hurtling out of nowhere to smash any of Yosuke's hopes for an afterschool plan into little pieces. In this rare case, the grinding of his father's chair against the ground was _not_ succeeded by a stern call of his name, but rather a quick goodbye and a kiss to his wife's cheek before a swift exit.

He marvelled over this for a bit and became dimly aware of how he usually had to leave not long after his dad to get to school on time. His mother might have said something to that effect, which glossed over his ears. After mumbling a quick 'yeah, see ya' and a second occurrence of a scraping chair, Yosuke went to grab his school things that he always, _always_ neglected to pack the night before no matter how much he complained about it to himself and no one else.

There was no one else other than himself to really listen, anyway.

The sunshine, with its impeccable timing, had decided to make itself scarce around the time Yosuke left for school. He recalled marching out the door straight into a puddle, soaking the cuffs of his overlong trousers, and a raindrop from the house's roof landing right in his eye before he swore and stomped back into the house to dig out an umbrella from somewhere. Cycling while holding it over him was hard, and Yosuke didn't _want_ to get wet, but unfortunately those three things weren't mutually exclusive.

He became vaguely aware that any form of that combination posed a threat to his health as well as everyone else's when he found he was unable to see very well through the deluge. Yosuke relied on his foggy memory of where dangerous things were located (streetlights, trash cans, stray cats, stray students) on top of his already foggy memory of the route to school itself. Summer always did an excellent job of emptying his brain of anything useful.

It was when he agreed with himself on this notion that he neglected to remember _that_ streetlight when he attempted a wobbly turn about a minute away from the hill leading to the school's entrance. There was a loud crash and a dull crack as his bike crushed his schoolbag and a world full of bright pangs and stars and pain, oh god the _pain_. Yosuke had fallen off the bike into a standing position but the combination of his nether-regions meeting the post on top of experiencing the shock of the collision wasn't too healthy for his manhood. He hoped no one saw that. Everyone probably did, going by the following silence between raindrops that persisted even before the crash, but he was used to pretending. Yosuke decided to walk the rest of the way after that, sore as it was.

Between it being the first day of school and having his nuts cracked (it pained him even more to even _think_ this), how much worse could things get? Yosuke found his question answered after he had trudged past the cherry blossoms at the entrance, annoyingly pink against the dark skies, and had already sat down gingerly in his designated classroom ready to listen to nothing at all.

The door had slid open moments later to allow a slouching man to stomp in, grumbling darkly. Yosuke restrained a groan. He'd heard of this teacher, and literally heard him at times from several rooms across. Kinshiro Morooka seemed to _hate_ kids, and why he taught them was a mystery to everyone. Yosuke figured he only did it for the holidays. Infamous among students and staff alike for being overtly terrible, it already looked to be a promising year full of tongue-lashing and overbite.

"You!" Within seconds he had already barked at one of the students who had raised his head to see him enter. "What're _you_ lookin' at?"

The boy looked somewhere between annoyed and terrified at the outburst, but decided to be smart and stayed silent. Yosuke thought this would be a good time to rest his head on the desk before he got yelled at for having eyes, too, and figured he may as well hide them while wallowing in his own pain and misery. Morooka was starting to speak again anyway, now situated at the front of the classroom.

"Alright you cretins, _listen up_! Y'got a new student joining your class. Guess he's decided to grace our presence by coming all the way from the filth of the city, probably to prove a point or some shit like—"

A transfer in this town was rare; to Yosuke's knowledge, the most recent case of it was himself. Still wasn't enough to get him to raise his head, though. After more prescribed ranting and an odd pause, Morooka eventually spat towards the open door.

"Get your ass _over_ here, Narukami; we don't have all day!"

The rumble of chatter from the classroom quieted when a different set of footsteps played under it. The dampened click of his heels seemed to draw enough attention, but not Yosuke's, who was still lounging in his own languidness. Some of the girls started to whisper to one another; bits and pieces of 'where's he from?' and 'wow, he's _hot_' managed to drift over, mindless as they were. All that was on Yosuke's mind was how he wanted to go home _right now, __**god**_ and he raised his head in annoyance at this situation and suddenly he sat rigid and his head emptied.

A grey bowl-cut, and grey eyes that were so, _so_ blank, with a face just as bad for it.

Yosuke promptly froze over.

_Holy shit_ - it was _him_. The _dream guy_.

He then retracted that thought – 'dream guy'? He sounded like a _girl_ – and instead dubbed him as just The Guy, and stared openly at him with enough sense to keep his jaw closed. He probably wasn't the only one; he had that sort of look about him that drew every eye. Even through the mist of his unconscious recollection Yosuke could tell that this was the exact same person from his dream. His height, how he stood, the way he wore his jacket... the popped collar would have made this new kid look like some kind of douchebag to some, but in the way he held himself, Yosuke couldn't help but think how misleadingly false that was. He watched the room with a degree of apathy, no trace of any kind of expression from the moment he set foot inside of it.

Yosuke felt himself brought back to reality when Morooka made a sudden movement. He was surly even in his attempt to grab some chalk – something only he could accomplish - only to fall short and have the new guy beat him to the punch, alarming the rest of room that wasn't already enthralled. He began to write the first character of his name before the teacher had a chance to blink and then the male students were starting to whisper too, with full reason. Yosuke knew as well as anyone how Kinshiro Morooka was _not_ someone to mess with, and obviously his demeanour wasn't enough to scare The Guy into docility. Amazingly, the man didn't comment, though it seemed his overbite was a little more biting than usual. In no time at all the chalk had been set down and the student, with Morooka looking a little redder, turned around to face the class that he'd already won over in seconds to introduce himself. Glancing at the board again, Yosuke looked over the guy's name.

_Is that..._ _Yu..._ Narukami_? Can't be right. But if it is, that's certainly a ballsy name for a ballsy guy_. Or maybe he was just an idiot and everyone was getting keyed up for disappointment; a wishful thought.

"My name is Yu Narukami." The boy spoke out in an even and firm tone for how quiet it was. "I moved to Inaba quite recently from Tokyo. It's nice to meet you all."

He closed with the shortest of bows, while Yosuke wondered which part of Tokyo he had come from, having hailed from there himself. It already started to annoy him a little, having this new kid look so comfortable standing up there it was unbearable, as if he'd been there forever. His own experience was more of an experience for the all wrong reasons; Yosuke was probably the first transfer in years. This new guy at least had him as a prelude and, as much as he didn't like to acknowledge it, had a bit more unforced charisma than Yosuke did at the time. He hoped people wouldn't start to compare them – they already shared the city they lived in. It was more realistic to hope that they had forgotten exactly where Yosuke came from at all.

"Says here your parents are working overseas," Morooka said loudly as he flipped through what was probably his file; likely for the first time, as well. Yosuke suppressed a snicker at the real possibility that this was probably an attempt to get back at Narukami for the chalk thing, throwing any caution about telling other students his private information to the wind. "Hah! Dumped their baggage in some nowhere town while they ran away across the ocean? They must _adore_ you."

What the transfer student accomplished then was a sneer that didn't seem to include any mouth movement, just a slight narrow at the sides of the eyes before they returned to normal again; clearly _not_ the response Morooka wanted, who just _hmph_'d and threw the file to his desk again while several students looked at each other. Meanwhile, Narukami still didn't stop standing there as if he'd been there all his life and had swept over the room with eyes of quicksilver that felt an awful lot like they were settled on _Yosuke_ now. When he realised this, he glanced away for a moment to ponder over nothing in particular and then looked back to discover that yep, he _was_ looking in his direction, and still doing it. He couldn't help but give an uncomfortable shift under his strong gaze.

What was he staring at? Was there something on his face? Did the pole leave a mark on his face as well as his... goods? Not that he knew, he didn't _check, _but they smarted enough for that to be a possibility. Maybe he _should _have checked. How long was it going to be until class broke out? He could nip into the bathroom real quick... Yosuke had sat there thinking about his junk and this dude was _still _staring! What a day this was turning out to be.

Though after a quick two and two, it made sense; the only remaining seat in the classroom was the one literally under his nose. Yosuke just happened to lie within his path of sight. That was all it was. He gave a mental bristle at himself for being so silly about this whole thing.

Satonaka raised her hand, he then noticed, and said something to the tune of pointing the seat out to the new student. Not like he needed to be told; he had already pierced a hole through it with his eyes by that stage, travelling straight on and through Yosuke's brain and it would have explained why he felt so confused by everything. The new guy made his way over to the chair awfully quick; too quick to be _ordinary_. Or Yosuke really did hit his head off that pole. He cursed under his breath once Narukami seated himself and he shifted. He didn't hear him, did he? Yosuke hoped not. Last thing he wanted was this guy all up in his business for something so little and so stupid. He was having a really,_ really_ sucky morning and it was the last thing he wanted by that stage.

First day meant a whole day of Morooka parading his blatant disgust for anyone under thirty, it seemed. Yosuke sat through it and all of the other pastoral issues with a perfected daze of zero attention. Even if he did listen he wouldn't remember any of it anyway. When would he ever want to come and talk to this guy if _he_ had issues? Morooka had plenty of his own.

By the last time he looked at the clock, the teacher had already left after an unusual call for staff on the school's P.A. system. People were getting up but not leaving, instead going to talk to classmates, making Yosuke then realise he did hear the part of the call where they were told not to leave the classroom until they were told. It surprised him that there wasn't at least one person going towards the door; like someone such as Yukiko Amagi, who would have had things outside school to attend to, but the girl dressed in red remained dignified in her seat, waiting. Maybe it was the thick fog that made the windows opaque that deterred anyone from going outside.

He then became vaguely aware that quite a few female voices had condensed around one part of the room. Without moving it sounded as if there are about four or five girls crowded around the new student's desk, making friendly conversation and asking politely about things no one cared about.

Damn high-school girls; always so nosey about any new blood that came within ten feet of them, especially in a town like this where it could be gold dust. Yosuke had received similar treatment at the beginning when he had transferred, too, and he lamented a little over the fact that that was the most attention he had ever received since he first moved into Inaba, Junes drama notwithstanding. He gave a grumbling sigh and turned his head as he laid it on the desk. It was going to be some time before he'd have reason to move again.

"Yosuke Hanamura."

The voice, so sure and concise in its delivery, startled him, causing Yosuke's head to suddenly shoot up from its place and he found himself nose to nose with the new student himself sans female attention, staring at him just as blankly as he had before. Yosuke made a noise that was _not _a squawk, leaping back in surprise and barely concealed embarrassment at being so close to this stranger all of a sudden. After his heartbeat and the legs on his chair rocked back into normalcy, he blinked owlishly and glanced around him, making sure that there weren't any other potential Yosuke Hanamuras around that he may have been talking to instead of him. He then gave his answer, not like it was a question... how'd he even get his full name, anyway?

"Y-Yeah, that's me."

"Morooka wanted me to go to the faculty office once school was over, but..." Narukami's gaze flickered to the left, potentially at the door. "They're all meeting there right now, aren't they? I suppose I can wait outside until they're finished. Would you be able to take me there?"

_Oh._ That was all he wanted. Then what was Yosuke so worried about? He deflated and felt very puzzled with himself again, which seemed to spread to Narukami himself.

"Is there a problem?" he asked, eyebrow raised. It might have been out of concern. "I'm not planning to leave yet, if that's what you're thinking..."

"N-No, 'course not!" And in Yosuke's self-deprecation, he almost ignored the guy! He was making a dreadful mess out of this, and a terrible impression to boot, wasn't he? ...Why did that even matter? Shaking his head, he scooted out of his seat and flashed his usual smile at him. "C'mon, I'll show you. School's not _that_ big."

He tried not to make a show of opening the door for them both and then closing it after them, but it still felt like he did. Once it clicked into place, the sound felt a lot like the sealing of someone's fate somewhere. An oddly specific thought, but it was gone before Yosuke even came close to heeding it.

* * *

The office wasn't that far away, only being a floor below the one they were on currently. It was as distant as their conversation was lively, which ranked somewhere between a potted plant and a dead cat. Narukami hadn't even looked back at Yosuke since they left the classroom, walking slowly while the other treaded behind him, slower still. The brunet tightened his posture and attempted to speak through the quietness of the corridor.

"Soooo. Narukami, was it?"

The attempt hung in the air like a bad scent. Yosuke swallowed and began to find it too difficult to look at the other boy anymore. He sounded desperate, didn't he? Wouldn't have been the first time.

"Nice name," he added, and realised there was truth through his grasping. Anyone with a family name like 'thunder god' carried a bit of expectancy to be an unbelievably cool person. Yosuke couldn't exactly deny it considering how much he felt like he really shouldn't be walking with this boy right now. "Sounds... cool. Not like mine, mine's just... yeah." Or following him, to be more accurate. The student turned yet another corner before he got the chance and Yosuke restrained a small frown.

Then, after some more silence, "...Yu is fine with me, if you'd prefer."

Yosuke blinked and looked up at him, quite surprised. That was certainly... sudden, if he said what he thought he said. His first time talking to this guy and he was already apparently on first-name basis? He hadn't even looked him when he said it. It didn't particularly bother Yosuke or anything - in a strange way he welcomed the fact that Narukami was comfortable enough around _him _of all people to do that one thing - it was just... well, _strange_. Who would have thought this guy would be so (open, he realised, didn't seem at all like the correct word to be using with this person) _intimate _(but why was _this_ the right one?) with someone else off the bat? He certainly didn't seem the type who would; he hadn't even made an expression outside of what appeared to be closely perfected deadpan since he'd arrived, he bet... Yosuke tried not to think too much about that.

Despite it all, he attempted to keep the confusion out of his returned smile, and hoped that his responding tone sounded flattered or appreciative or something else that reflected general positivity.

"Ah, right. Yu, then..."

And even at that, this sudden informal behaviour put a damper on any further possible conversation Yosuke could have attempted. He tried to not comment on the now extremely blatant fact that it was _Yu_ leading the way to the office and not... well, _him_. He asked to be taken there, so what was the point of this? Suddenly every corridor felt ominous in steadily increasing amounts. He gave an apprehensive swallow, almost a gulp.

"Is something the matter?"

Yosuke jumped. How did Yu manage to even _hear _that from where he was? "W-Wha'? No! It's, ah... good. It's fine."

He glanced from side to side to find that there were no other students around. The announcement had been surprisingly successful in keeping the student body in place. Maybe its combination with the fog really _did _creep all of them out enough to keep them inside. It might have been the red and blue lights flashing by the windows that garnered the rubbernecking curiosity that seemed to plague this boring town and kept them in their place. Regardless, the lack of any company other than this strange boy's wasn't much comfort.

They were at the bridge between the main building and the practice building now, which wasn't exactly nowhere near the faculty office, but they were taking a much longer route than they needed to. Yosuke started to wonder if Yu really didn't know where he was going all this time and was just wandering aimlessly, making him feel very stupid and yet not thinking the same about the other boy at all. Again, not the first time.

"You do know you could've taken the stairs we passed before, right?" he put delicately. As delicately as Yosuke could have managed, anyway. "We don't have to go to the practice building to get there."

The sureness Yu replied with unnerved him. "I know."

When Yosuke lifted his head to look at him again, he found that the newcomer had already turned to stare at Yosuke openly, cutting off any reply he could have had prepared. Even _he_ could tell this guy wanted something from him, but he'd be damned if he knew was it was. The heavy fog outside the windows gave the impression of the two being confined in a suspended tunnel, Yosuke going further to imagine Yu was blocking his path rather than intending to say something.

The frigid evils the transfer student was giving him melded into a more measuring look that seemed too _aware _to be coming from someone who wasn't serious. His voice came forward, cold and sharp like metal.

"Yosuke Hanamura... do you consider your current life a good one?"

"Huh?"

Yosuke was finding himself staring blankly at this person far too much (and this was _after_ they had left the classroom, where he wasn't situated behind Yu anyway) having only been in each other's presence in this case for a matter of minutes. It must have been giving him the _worst_ impression, like he was some sort of doofus... and there he went again with the impressions. It _really_ didn't matter. Though to be fair, it was a _weird _question. He wasn't even sure he truly understood what he was asking. Or what was going on, for that matter. And why did he keep referring to him with his full name like that? Yu, whose mouth turned slightly, went on.

"Do you like things are they are now? School, family, work... is there anything you have ever wished you had done that you hadn't?"

Just when he thought the creep factor couldn't be turned any more up to eleven. "I... guess?" ventured Yosuke. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and scuffed a shoe against the wooden floor. "I mean... sure, it sucks to have everyone blabbing behind my back about Junes and all, and I complain about it a lot, but it isn't _that_ bad."

He only realised then how little sense that spiel would have made to a stranger, which this kid was, but it didn't seem to deter Yu from throwing him yet another strange question.

"Then what about you as a person? Is there something about yourself you wish you _didn't _have?"

Yosuke managed to keep a mindless "uhhhhh" from escaping there, which he quietly congratulated himself on, but it was obvious the other wasn't finished yet.

"Something deep inside you... a part of you that you would never want anyone to see or know about, even if they were your closest friends. Something you might even hate yourself for. Do you feel that something like that exists in you?"

His words were rife with enigma and other things beyond Yosuke's understanding, which only made him feel even more uncomfortable than he was. His elaboration didn't make anything any clearer than it was before. A part of you that you don't want people to see... was he talking about secrets? Of course he had secrets; who didn't? Was Yu asking him what they were or something? Yosuke had the feeling that that wasn't exactly what he meant and abandoned that line of thought. After a while he realised it had gone beyond the socially acceptable time for a reply and it made him feel anxious as he struggled to think of an educated answer, in the harsh gaze of someone who appeared to be as interested in his response as the question was deep.

"Dunno..." he stumbled out, "I... guess I-"

"Would you say you care about others as much as yourself? What lengths would you go to to help those around you?"

What this guy was getting at was a complete and utter mystery to Yosuke, and these questions were really starting to bother him in ways he didn't think he could be bothered. What did all of this even _mean_ and why was he asking _him_ all of this? His visible discomfort must've been strong enough to make Yu suddenly become less harsh in his everything, and he let out a small sigh.

"It's... nothing. Don't think too hard about it." For the first time, he glanced off into the distance, limited with fog as it was. "Just... if you don't like how things are, don't become something you're not, and _should_ not, even if you think you _have_ to... even if you think you have the best reason in the world for it."

Never before had Yosuke felt such a desire to _understand_, because Yu's words seemed important even though they were confusing and he wasn't too sure _why_ he felt that way, but he looked up to realise that they had stopped outside the faculty office and Yu was looking at him as if he was waiting for him to do something. He wasn't even aware they had started to walk again. How deep in a rut did you have to be to not realise you were going down a _staircase_? Yosuke gave himself a mental shake as ineffective as the ones previous. A tumble down some steps wouldn't have gone unappreciated at this point, he realised.

"I'm going to wait outside until the meeting is over." Yu reminded him he existed again. "I think they'll start letting people go home soon. You should probably go pack your things."

"Ah, right." Yosuke ignored the sureness in the boy's voice and instead took it as dismissal. That was fine; he'd done what he came here to do, after all. A favour which consisted of nothing but him unwittingly following the transfer student around the school like a sheep for no particular reason, but had run its course nonetheless. "Well, if you say so."

As he turned to go back to their classroom, Yosuke felt a pair of piercing eyes on him until he turned the corner. He didn't recall hearing anything move from back there, doors _or_ people, even as he climbed the stairs and returned to the first floor in the way he had intended to bring his new classmateto the office in the first place.

Well.

That was different.


End file.
